Page 10 of The One You Want

“False whatnow?”

He waved the flowers, smirking. “These babies. Keep up,Jenny.”

I laughed. “Gotit.”

“So these grow in clusters like this and they get to be pretty big. But they dry really well and they actually look pretty cool when you strip the little flower leaves off from the main stalk. I bet you could do something cool withthem.”

“The color isgorgeous.”

“Right?” He looked about as excited as I usually got when I opened a fresh carton of Ben and Jerry’s. This was like Christmas morning to him, having an audience to talk about flowerswith.

He showed me a few more options he had come up with, all of them perfectly doable. I bounced a little on my seat, even more excited than Grant. “This is soawesome.” I wished that I could get to work on this right now. I would much rather be sitting in my craft room than going to have lunch with mygrandmother.

“Happy to help,” he said. “You know me, I want nothing more than to spread my love and knowledge of flowers to all corners of theworld.”

Before I could rib him about his dorkiness, my phone buzzed in my purse. “Shoot, am I late already?” The thought sent a sliver of cold fear through me. My grandmother was going to killme.

I pulled out my phone and sighed in relief, seeing that it wasn’t my grandmother after all. In fact, I still had twenty minutes to get myself up to the hotel forlunch.

“Not her?” he asked, probably reading the relief in myface.

“No, it’s just Libby.” I clicked on her message and any relief I might have been feeling promptly fled mybody.

“Jenny? Youokay?”

Okay was definitely not the word I would use to describe myself. Freaking the hell out was far moreaccurate.

“She wants me to lead the next Libbies meeting,” I muttered, staring down at the phone in horror. “What is shethinking?”

Grant’s eyebrow went up. “This is a badthing?”

“Yes it’s a bad thing! I can’t lead ameeting!”

“Why not?” His utter bewilderment reminded me that he hadn’t been on this island long. No Lilac Bay resident—especially the guys—would ask that question about theLibbies.

“In the first place, I suck at talking to groups,” I explained, glaring down at my phone as if I could change the message still on the screen by sheer force of will. “Any groups. I get all nervous and tongue-tied and my face turns bright red. It’s just…notgood.”

Grant frowned at me. “Really? I would never have guessed that aboutyou.”

I laughed. “Goodone.”

His face remained utterly serious. “I’m not joking. You always seem so confident whenever we’re talking at themarket.”

I gaped at him. I would bet that if you asked ten people on this island to describe me, every one of them would put shy at the top of the list. Well, maybe not all ten. Probably a few of them would say, “Jennywho?”

How was it that Grant saw me sodifferently?

I brushed that question aside for the time being, needing to focus on the coming disaster. “I’m terrible at talking to groups. Like, get so nervous I trip over my own two feet terrible. But even if that wasn’t the case, leading the Libbies is like, next levelterrifying.”

“Why? Aren’t these ladies yourfriends?”

That gave me pause. Were they my friends? A few of them, I guessed. Libby and Posey Conley were always nice to me, but Posey was off on some grand adventure with her new boyfriend. Iris Jenkins, Posey’s cousin, and Cora Hanson were nice too, but they were both the kind of girl who I found incredibly intimidating—put-together, confident, take-no-shit-from-anyonegirls.

The truth was, if my best friend Riley wasn’t planning on being there, I usually skipped the Libbiesmeetings.

But none of that was thepoint.

“They are,” I told him. “But they’re also insane. Like certifiablyinsane.”